1. INTONATION

2. What is intonation? Intonation is a term used to refer to the distinctive use of different patterns of pitch that carry meaningful information. Intonation describes how the voice rises and falls in speech. The three main patterns of intonation in English are: falling intonation, rising intonation and fall-rise intonation.

3. A nucleus refers to the syllable in an intonation unit which carries maximal prominence. For example, this is the normal way of saying the following sentence: I am WRIting a LETter to him NOW. There are ten syllables in this sentence among which three are stressed syllables. Thelast stressed syllable is NOW. So we say that NOW has the focus stress, and is thetonic syllable and therefore is the nucleus of the intonation unit. The nucleus is theessential part of the intonation unit. It is still present even if the unit consists of asingle syllable, as is the case with many sentence words like yes, no, why, etc.

4. English has two basic intonation patterns Falling intonation Falling intonation describes how the voice falls on the final stressed syllable of a phrase or a group of words. A falling intonation is very common in wh-questions. Where’s the nearest p ↘ ost-office? What time does the film f ↘ inish?

5. We also use falling intonation when we say something definite, or when we want to be very clear about something: I think we are completely l ↘ ost. OK, here’s the magaz ↘ ine you wanted.

6. Rising intonation Rising intonation describes how the voice rises at the end of a sentence. Rising intonation is common in yes-no questions: I hear the Health Centre is expanding. So, is that the new d ↗ octor? Are you th ↗ irsty?

7. Fall-rise intonation Fall-rise intonation describes how the voice falls and then rises. We use fall- rise intonation at the end of statements when we want to say that we are not sure, or when we may have more to add: I do ↘ n’t support any football team at the m ↘ om ↗ ent. (but I may change my mind in future). It rained every day in the firs ↘ t w ↗ eek. (but things improved after that).

8. We use fall-rise intonation with questions, especially when we request information or invite somebody to do or to have something. The intonation pattern makes the questions sound more polite: Is this your cam ↘ er ↗ a? Would you like another co ↘ ff ↗ ee?